I am in the chip semiconductor business. How do I view the current chip industry market? It can be said to be thriving.
1. SMIC is currently the most successful commercial wafer foundry in China, with a chip foundry market share of 5.4 and a growth rate of 6.3. (For comparison, Samsung's foundry market share is 7.7, with a growth rate of 2.7).
2. AMEC is currently the best company in the country to independently produce etching machines. Its etching machines are of 16nm standard, and its products are being installed by TSMC and other companies. The production of 5nm etching machines at the end of the year is only reported by CCTV. The specifics are It also depends on the business plan.
3. SMIC is currently the best company in China to independently produce lithography machines. Its lithography machines are of 90nm standard. Because it cannot obtain relevant parts from any foreign companies, 45nm lithography machines are actually several years old. It has been produced before, but it has been embargoed and has retreated to 90nm (for comparison, Dutch ASML products use German lenses, American gratings and the essence of the dominant industries of various countries).
4. To borrow a word from a Loongson engineer, domestic chips can design high-performance chips if they want to, but it is meaningless if they cannot be put into the market. The X86 instruction set and the ARM instruction set have dominated the desktop and mobile markets. After decades of hard work and heavy patent protection, all software is designed based on them. The soil for the birth of new instruction sets is gone. Under this premise, our chips can only be used in scientific research and military fields. In 2017, the world's most powerful supercomputer used domestic Sunway chips.
5. Not to mention commercial chips such as Huawei’s Kirin.
China can design good chips, 5nm or even 3nm is not a problem. What we lack is the equipment to process chips. To put it bluntly, it is photolithography machines. However, the problem of photolithography machines has been solved in our country. There's something to be said for it.
In fact, not many high-end chips are used, but mid-to-low-end chips are actually used more. Last year, our country invested 140 billion to strengthen and expand the R&D and production of semiconductor companies. When our Chinese semiconductor companies can truly get rid of the control of the United States and other countries, it will also be the day when the United States truly declines!